"Linux vendor Canonical said it has 'no interest' in Linux kernel development. Two weeks ago a Linux Foundation report showed that since version 2.6.32, Microsoft had committed more code to the Linux kernel than Canonical. Since then, Canonical has faced claims from rivals that it does not contribute to Linux as much as it should given its popularity. Recently Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth told The Inquirer that his company has no interest in contributing to the Linux kernel." Why is this such a bad thing? You can contribute more to open source than code alone. Like, I don't know, users?

Since I would suspect Canonical is competing against other linux distributions and vendors more than against non-Linux, and most of its wins in users will be from the former and not the latter, its not really a valid argument.

They are not contributing users, they are taking users from other sources that may contribute more and may end up contributing less due to not having the same resources due to the loss of those users.